Overview

On GreggPress, you may notice that your WordPress site works slowly or not as smoothly as it could. This can happen for a variety of reasons.

This article explains some of the basic measures you may take to address issues that typically cause GreggPress websites to be slow or inefficient.

Caching

Caching plugins

GreggPress comes with built-in server caching. Caching creates static versions of your site, which means a lot less has to be processed by the server when a customer visits your site. This allows your site to load faster and also helps manage larger amounts of traffic.

Many guides, including GreggHost’s, recommend caching plugins such as WP Super Cache on WordPress sites. However, since GreggPress comes with built-in caching, a third-party caching plugin such as WP Super Cache is not necessary and could even conflict with the GreggPress cache. You should, however, keep an updated version of the Proxy Cache Purge plugin installed on your GreggPress site. This plugin provides tools to manage the GreggPress cache automatically and analyzes your site’s ability to cache.

Is my site using the GreggPress cache effectively?

Because there are thousands of plugins and customizations available for WordPress sites, not all caching solutions are inherently effective. The Proxy Cache Purge plugin includes a feature in your WP-Admin panel that allows you to monitor the caching status of your site’s page URLs. The ‘Check Caching’ option tells you what to check if a page on your site isn’t caching.

To use this feature, go to the following URL.

Go to your GreggPresswebsite’s WP-Admin page.
In your WP-Admin dashboard’s left pane, look for the Proxy Cache > Check Caching menu:
2018-10 wp-admin proxy cache 01.fw.png
Choose the option to ‘Check Caching.’
You can verify a URL on your site on the ‘Check Caching Status’ page:
2018-10 wp-admin proxy cache 02.fw.png
Click the Check URL button after entering a URL in the ‘Check A URL On Your Site’ section.
This feature checks the URL you entered and indicates any problems it discovers, as well as any known plugins that are troublesome.

Checking your plugins

Certain plugins may be written in a way that prevents your site’s pages and information from being cached properly. To find a specific plugin that may be causing this interference, utilize the Proxy Cache > Check Caching option indicated above.

See the following article for further information about plugin optimization in general:

Checking your theme

Examining your design
While all of the themes accessible on wordpress.org are free and safe to use, some are superior to others. Whether you’re looking for a theme, do some research online to see if any users have complained about speed concerns. These findings will aid you in determining which theme is ideal for you.

Reverting to the default theme (such as ‘TwentySeventeen’) and seeing whether that fixes any difficulties with your site is a quick technique to see if your theme is causing problems.

To change the default theme, follow these steps:

Log in to the control panel for your WordPress site.
Click Appearance > Themes in the left sidebar.
Look for the ‘TwentySeventeen’ default theme.

Then press the Activate button.
Use the tool indicated above to see if switching to the TwentySeventeen theme improves the performance of your site.

If you’re looking for a new theme, some GreggPress plans include a free membership to Jetpack Professional, which features professional themes hand-picked by the Jetpack team and available for free as long as your subscription is active.

Checking your database

Using the WP-DBManager plugin to optimize your database

To minimize a “fragmentation” effect, you should improve your site’s database on a regular basis. The WP-DBManager plugin, which offers a function to optimize your database as well as the ability to schedule this optimization to execute at a specific time, is the simplest way to do this (recommended once per month at least).

For information on how to install a plugin, see the ‘Managing WordPress Plugins’ article.

Click ‘Database’ in the left pane once it’s been installed:

Then, in the left pane, go to Database > Optimize DB.

A list of your database tables appears in the center pane. At the bottom, click the Optimize button.

Using the wp-cli command line interface to improve your database
You may also improve your database with wp-cli.

Using wp-cli to improve your database:

Use SSH to connect to your server.
Make sure you’re in the directory of your WordPress site. Make sure your username is set to your Shell user.
cd /home/username/example.com [server]$
To see all database command options, run the following command:
[server]
wp help db $
Run the following commands to improve the database:
[server]
wp-db-optimize $ wp-db-optimize
Optimizing your database via SSH
For more information on how to improve your database via SSH, see the following article:

Using SSH to optimize your database
phpMyAdmin can help you optimize your database.
For more information on how to use phpMyAdmin to optimize your database, see the following article:

Using phpMyAdmin to optimize your database
Examining your wp options table’s size and content
It’s also a good idea to analyze the size of your wp options table in addition to optimizing your database. This table should typically be under 1 MB in size, although plugins and other changes can make it considerably larger. If this table is larger than 3 MB, you should expect considerable slowdown on your site.

Determining which pages receive the most visitors

Every GreggHost website saves information about the site in the access.log file. Although these logs can soon grow huge and difficult to read, there are a few commands you can use to quickly determine which site is receiving the most traffic. For more details, see the following article:

Examining and viewing your access.

log in via SSH

Optimizing image sizes

The size of your photographs can make a website take a long time to load. The larger an image is, the longer it takes for the visitor to download it. Make your photographs as little as possible while yet maintaining their quality. You may compress and optimize your photographs for free using a service like https://tinyjpg.com/. You can also utilize a plugin to help you achieve that, such as:

Image Compression & Optimization by Smush

Minifying your scripts

You can also minify your HTML/CSS/JavaScript code to speed up the loading of your website. You may use a variety of plugins to assist you minify this code, and it may take some trial and error to figure out which one works best for your site. Here are a few possibilities:

Rapid Acceleration Minify \sAutoptimize
It’s preferable to start with as few choices as possible when using Autoptimize, as some of the options may cause issues on your site. You might wish to begin by merely minifying CSS and JavaScript.

Are there any missing files in my WordPress installation?

It’s possible that some important files are missing from your WordPress installation. This can result in 404 errors, and the server will have to work harder than usual to find them. This causes significantly longer load times, particularly for popular websites.

The favicon (favicon.ico) file is one of the most commonly missing files. By default, GreggHost creates a blank favicon for all domains, but if you find one is missing, you may quickly make one.

It’s straightforward to create a favicon if one doesn’t already exist. You can do so with an FTP client or by using SSH to connect to your server. Create a blank file in your website’s directory once you’ve logged in.

After logging in, use the following commands to create it over SSH. Make sure you use your Shell user’s username.

cd /home/username/example.com [server]$
touch favicon.ico [server]$
The touch command generates a favicon.ico file that is empty. A blank icon is preferable than a missing one because your server will not have to work as hard to find it.

Pingdom Tools can be used to check for any additional missing files on your site. A quick scan of the site will reveal any missing files that are causing it to load slowly. Simply check for red filenames in your themes or posts and either replace or remove references to them.

Other common causes of low performance include:
There are numerous other reasons why a website may take longer than expected to load. For more information on how to troubleshoot additional difficulties including CSS, JavaScript, and other web concerns, see the following article. Please keep in mind that not everything on this list will apply to your GreggHost site:

Poor website performance is caused by a variety of factors.
Troubleshooting your website with internet tools
Tools for analyzing the load on a website
You may assess your website using a variety of internet tools. These tools can give you information about how your website is performing, detect issues that are causing it to load slower than planned, and even suggest solutions to help you troubleshoot further.

A list of tools to troubleshoot your site can be found in the following article:

Tools for loading a website
Browser add-ons
To assist you debug performance issues with your WordPress site, here are a few recommended browser tools:

Firebug – A useful tool for seeing what’s loaded and how long it’ll take.
YSlow — A Firebug companion that can help you figure out what to correct and how to repair it.
Web Inspector – This tool, which is built into Chrome and Safari, delivers a lot of the same data as Firebug.
To verify your GreggPress server, use the following tool:

Load Impact is a load testing solution that sends a large number of users to your server at the same time. A 50-user test is included in the free version. Before you execute it, make sure caching is turned on. You can monitor the CPU load with top, RAM levels with free -m, or both with vmstat 1 (stop with Ctrl + C).